Perpetual Defense Thread (Defense & non-commercial Space Nerds ITT)

The Marines are typically invited to join most Army programs, and most often decline so they can get their own special toys. Even if it weren't some sort of political or cultural issue, the nature of two completely tolerated "similar but different" doctrines and procurement channels enable the Marines will always result in these issues.

But then you know my implied stance regarding the Marines…

If it’s truly the for the good of the corps, the Marines should offer up one general officer as a sacrifice (to be discharged without access to retirement or benefits) every time they want to start their own separate development of something another service already has.

The Marines do get better stuff sometimes, but mostly it’s just different. With rucksacks that is tolerable, since it’s highly unlikely that mixing rucksacks or their components would cause any sort of problem. But two heavy trucks with identical configurations, mission, and specifications but different drive trains and suspensions is just ridiculous. The shipping containers are generic and universal, but if the Army truck carrying it breaks down in an area where Marines are the landowners, then it might not get fixed — that’s ridiculous.

Except logistics can't be universal. Congress authorization and appropriation see to it that the Army and Marines maintain separation. Literally the basic concept of two deparments/services ensures no universal nature.

Except logistics can't be universal. Congress authorization and appropriation see to it that the Army and Marines maintain separation. Literally the basic concept of two deparments/services ensures no universal nature.

Exactly. Part of the reason for keeping them separate is so that they will do their own thing and all the eggs aren't in one basket. As long as they are separate entities, it makes sense to do development and procurement separately. Anytime the services get together to develop something it just turns into a compromised clusterfuck that everyone is unhappy with.

Except logistics can't be universal. Congress authorization and appropriation see to it that the Army and Marines maintain separation. Literally the basic concept of two deparments/services ensures no universal nature.

Exactly. Part of the reason for keeping them separate is so that they will do their own thing and all the eggs aren't in one basket. As long as they are separate entities, it makes sense to do development and procurement separately. Anytime the services get together to develop something it just turns into a compromised clusterfuck that everyone is unhappy with.

Trucks, rifles, and ammo are not VTOL fighters. Where it doesn't make sense to force the AF and Navy to settle on a compromised design just so the Marines can have their VTOL strike fighter, it does make sense to force the Marines to buy into the same logisitics programs as the Army. A truck is a truck, they have to go the same places, fit on the same planes, carry the same loads.

Except logistics can't be universal. Congress authorization and appropriation see to it that the Army and Marines maintain separation. Literally the basic concept of two deparments/services ensures no universal nature.

Exactly. Part of the reason for keeping them separate is so that they will do their own thing and all the eggs aren't in one basket. As long as they are separate entities, it makes sense to do development and procurement separately. Anytime the services get together to develop something it just turns into a compromised clusterfuck that everyone is unhappy with.

Trucks, rifles, and ammo are not VTOL fighters. Where it doesn't make sense to force the AF and Navy to settle on a compromised design just so the Marines can have their VTOL strike fighter, it does make sense to force the Marines to buy into the same logisitics programs as the Army. A truck is a truck, they have to go the same places, fit on the same planes, carry the same loads.

You're missing the point, though. The issue isn't that we have equipment that can take on this role or that role, it's that we have entire organizations with their own unique Congressional clout that affect the process.

Army regulations, processes, and leadership culture aren't Air Force regulations, processes, and leadership culture. Navy regulations, processes, and leadership culture are partly the same for Marines. Then there's basic doctrine. Each service develops doctrine on their own which in turn drives equipment design solicitation which in turn drives engineering and procurement which in turn drives operations years later that re-writes doctrine due to a new mission set which starts the process all over again.

The Army and Marines get different trucks not just because Congress afforded them the opportunity to request trucks at a separate time but also because they afford them the opportunity to order as separate entities.

Yeah, but that's easily fixed by Congress saying "Thou shalt have the same goddamn trucks".

Honestly the overlap is small. Anything logistical that involves moving stuff from place to place should be standardized. Same trucks, same cargo planes, same shipping containers. Communications should also overlap--everybody gets radios with the same frequencies and encryption so Marines can talk to their close air support, or the Army Reserve morons that are about to storm a building the Marines just called to be shelled by the Navy boat (or they can call the Navy boat and tell them to hold off).

Anything missional should *not* overlap--AF, Navy, and Marines pick their own damn planes. Marines and Army can have different guns and helmets and body armor. Anything one service buys becomes available to the other services, but there's no mandate that they take them if something else does the job better.

Yeah, but that's easily fixed by Congress saying "Thou shalt have the same goddamn trucks".

And also easily bungled by Congress saying "Thou shalt not have the same goddamn trucks.", maybe because some critters want one service to feel special or maybe because they have a buddy who wants to market to a specific audience.

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Honestly the overlap is small. Anything logistical that involves moving stuff from place to place should be standardized. Same trucks, same cargo planes, same shipping containers. Communications should also overlap--everybody gets radios with the same frequencies and encryption so Marines can talk to their close air support, or the Army Reserve morons that are about to storm a building the Marines just called to be shelled by the Navy boat (or they can call the Navy boat and tell them to hold off).

Anything missional should *not* overlap--AF, Navy, and Marines pick their own damn planes. Marines and Army can have different guns and helmets and body armor.

Honestly, I think the issue is that the Army/Navy/Marines/AF dictate the equipment but the combatant commands dictate the mission.

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Anything one service buys becomes available to the other services, but there's no mandate that they take them if something else does the job better.

Congratulations, you just looped right back around to why we have the problem to begin with. The Army buys trucks in the 90s that do the job. The Marines, rather than buy in the 90s, hold off 10-15 and get to claim not only the inadequacy of the earlier truck but that a newer, shinier model came out that they want.

That pales in comparison to the clusterfuck that has been US camouflage patterns over the past two decades. Which actually had little to do with Congress AFAICT. Congress is a big part of the problem, but it's not the only part.

That pales in comparison to the clusterfuck that has been US camouflage patterns over the past two decades. Which actually had little to do with Congress AFAICT. Congress is a big part of the problem, but it's not the only part.

Indeed, that's definitely a problem with the services. The Marines got their special camo and kept it to themselves, the Army pushed the hideous and only-effective-on-Grandma's-couch UCP pattern, the Air Force adopted a tiger-striped version of UCP, and the Navy just wanted something that really worked for ship-wear. Then there's the whole kerfluffle about the Scorpion variants of MultiCam and OCP.

Another service member shared with me a critique from Max Brooks (yes, that one). In it, he harps on politicians and the private side of the MIC but only offers a token criticism of military leadership. I had to explain that the services themselves (including their leadership) take a large share of responsibility in the process.

But yeah, five separate services, one of which moves between departments. Should they wear the same uniform, or different? If the same, which? I strongly doubt the Secretary of Defense would favor everyone wearing the same outfit and even more that the President would bother to weigh in on such a subject. That leaves Congress to decide, because it is a bit ridiculous to expect five services to "just do it on their own" when they get explicitly rewarded for going their own way.

But yeah, five separate services, one of which moves between departments. Should they wear the same uniform, or different? If the same, which? I strongly doubt the Secretary of Defense would favor everyone wearing the same outfit and even more that the President would bother to weigh in on such a subject. That leaves Congress to decide, because it is a bit ridiculous to expect five services to "just do it on their own" when they get explicitly rewarded for going their own way.

The same. Take MARPAT away from USMC, let it become the basic work/field uniform. The USN and USCG (Army can join too for COE ships) can compromise on some dark colored coveralls with retro reflective tape for underway, and otherwise use the basic field uniform. Let the services retain their service dress/optional dress uniforms for cultural reasons.

That the Navy ended up with the uniform that they did is indication enough that you can't rely on the services to make their own decisions about things like this. Unless RIF by attrition to MOB is USN's goal.

Forgetting what pattern is used, what's the functional difference between field uniforms? Number and style of pockets?

OK, not a war history buff so the only thing I know about it is from the first episode of Band of Brothers, where the Allies drop a lot of paratroopers. Many of them and the planes are shot down before they even have a chance to land.

So the strategy seemed to be to inundate the Nazis' coastal fortifications, basically having a lot of men absorb the munitions so that enough could get through.

If that happened today, those fortifications would be ripe targets for cruise missiles and air to ground missiles launched from miles away?

What were the capabilities of the bombers at the time? Could they have launched from England and carpet-bomb the fortifications out of the range of any kind of AA at the time?

Sounded like the Allies were able to raze Dresden almost to the ground with impunity so bombers had some strategic effectiveness.

OK, not a war history buff so the only thing I know about it is from the first episode of Band of Brothers, where the Allies drop a lot of paratroopers. Many of them and the planes are shot down before they even have a chance to land.

So the strategy seemed to be to inundate the Nazis' coastal fortifications, basically having a lot of men absorb the munitions so that enough could get through.

If that happened today, those fortifications would be ripe targets for cruise missiles and air to ground missiles launched from miles away?

What were the capabilities of the bombers at the time? Could they have launched from England and carpet-bomb the fortifications out of the range of any kind of AA at the time?

Sounded like the Allies were able to raze Dresden almost to the ground with impunity so bombers had some strategic effectiveness.

Also, the Nazis didn't have any kind of air support at Normandy?

All your questions are answered on the Wikipedia article about Normandy.

So the strategy seemed to be to inundate the Nazis' coastal fortifications, basically having a lot of men absorb the munitions so that enough could get through.

That's basically the core strategy of WW2 in a nutshell. We had a lot of new powerful weapons, vehicles, etc, but they weren't very accurate and since things were being designed and then put into combat in months, there wasn't time to develop optimal tactics.

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If that happened today, those fortifications would be ripe targets for cruise missiles and air to ground missiles launched from miles away?

WW2 itself proved that heavy ground fortifications are useless in the age of aircraft and armor. It's too easy to just bypass them or blow them up from a distance.

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What were the capabilities of the bombers at the time? Could they have launched from England and carpet-bomb the fortifications out of the range of any kind of AA at the time?

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Also, the Nazis didn't have any kind of air support at Normandy?

D-Day was a giant misdirection campaign, the Germans thought the attack was going to happen somewhere else and had everything in the wrong place. Time was a factor, and sustained bombardment enough to cripple the defenses would have tipped off the Germans. They did bombard the defenses, but it takes a lot to destroy well fortified bunkers like that.

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Sounded like the Allies were able to raze Dresden almost to the ground with impunity so bombers had some strategic effectiveness.

Dresden was an exercise in whether indiscriminate destruction of a city including civilians would break the will of the enemy. It didn't. The bombers weren't particularly accurate. but everyone had a bunch of them so they ended up destroying most of what they were trying to. The flight ranges of bombers and escorts informed a huge amount of what was attacked and where things were built/stockpiled on the ground. Early on both sides were pretty limited, near the end both sides could hit basically everywhere.

Regarding aircraft, I saw a Vice segment on Iraqi army units having to repeatedly drive out ISIS militants from villages near Mosul.

In one, they found a tunnel, camoflouged so it wasn't easy to see from the air. In it, they found a big boring machine used to dig these big tunnels. They suspect there are big networks of them in the area, which are used to evade air attacks.

Maybe drones don't have the munitions to make those tunnels collapse. Or they're not using anything like those bunker-busters.

Dresden wasn't quite razed to the ground, it just got a lot of publicity thanks to a few unscrupulous authors - plenty of German and Japanese cities sustained far heavier damage. Regardless of that, the brunt of damage inflicted by saturation bombing of cities was done by fire - typical construction of that era used brick walls and wooden cross-pieces - the allies used large high-explosive bombs to blow the roofs off the buildings, then dusted everything with clusters of small napalm bomblets. The wooden parts caught fire, burned away, and the remaining brick structures turned into giant chimneys, creating strong drafts that incinerated everything flammable inside. None of that applies to fortifications - they're small, dispersed, hardened and are expressly designed to resist burning. You pretty much have to hit them directly with fairly massive penetrating ordnance, and this just wasn't possible at the time, not with any degree of reliability or consistency. You could hand-pick some of the best pilots, train them hard for a while, give them specialized equipment, and they'll be able to take out some hardened point targets - but they will also take massive casualties getting close enough to score a hit, so within a few sorties, your elite force will be gone.

Maybe drones don't have the munitions to make those tunnels collapse. Or they're not using anything like those bunker-busters.

Collapsing tunnels, in a meaningful way, requires both massive ordnance and precise targeting. Right now, there appears to be no working way to precisely identify a tunnel aside from actually digging into the ground - IDF has been working quite hard on the issue in Gaza, and reports of their progress are quite vague.

Maybe drones don't have the munitions to make those tunnels collapse. Or they're not using anything like those bunker-busters.

Collapsing tunnels, in a meaningful way, requires both massive ordnance and precise targeting. Right now, there appears to be no working way to precisely identify a tunnel aside from actually digging into the ground - IDF has been working quite hard on the issue in Gaza, and reports of their progress are quite vague.

Given how much oversight Trump is doing on the military, I'm surprised that discovery didn't turn into an Oprah-style "YOU get a MOAB and YOU get a MOAB and YOU get a MOAB!"

OK, not a war history buff so the only thing I know about it is from the first episode of Band of Brothers, where the Allies drop a lot of paratroopers. Many of them and the planes are shot down before they even have a chance to land.

So the strategy seemed to be to inundate the Nazis' coastal fortifications, basically having a lot of men absorb the munitions so that enough could get through.

You have to use infantry to clear the beaches so that the tanks and artillery pieces following you can land for maneuver.

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If that happened today, those fortifications would be ripe targets for cruise missiles and air to ground missiles launched from miles away?

What were the capabilities of the bombers at the time? Could they have launched from England and carpet-bomb the fortifications out of the range of any kind of AA at the time?

The Allies used sorties of bombers and days of ship-guns where they could, but I'm reading some either conflicting or overlapping statements that German fortifications were actually fairly capable of withstanding the attacks, poor accuracy due to visibility issues for bombers or ships, etc etc.

Today, yes, we would use cruise missiles or some really damn good bunker-busting missiles...but then I can't imagine a modern military trying to play the guns-&-bunkers-on-the-coast game against anyone else, much less a US-led coalition.

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Sounded like the Allies were able to raze Dresden almost to the ground with impunity so bombers had some strategic effectiveness.

Different objective and circumstances.

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Also, the Nazis didn't have any kind of air support at Normandy?

Not in great enough numbers to really make much historic effect. I'm seeing a lot of different claimed reasons from the initial Google search: lack of CAS-trained pilots, lack of fuel, crappy weather, and most of all that the Patton/Calais deception actually worked as intended. Also seeing that the USAAF spend quite awhile whittling the Luftwaffe's fighters (and more importantly, pilots) away so that the Allies enjoyed air superiority during D-Day.

IIRC, the Germans also had a command-and-control issue on D-Day. Specifically once they learned where the Allies were attacking, and that it wasn't where they expected, they actually needed to wait for Hitler's approval to re-deploy significant assets. And he was sleeping. And you weren't allowed to wake him up.

IIRC, the Germans also had a command-and-control issue on D-Day. Specifically once they learned where the Allies were attacking, and that it wasn't where they expected, they actually needed to wait for Hitler's approval to re-deploy significant assets. And he was sleeping. And you weren't allowed to wake him up.

Just IIRC. If it's an urban legend, I'll retract.

In the World At War BBC series I recall someone saying they thought it was a diversionary attack designed to get the Germans to pull forces from elsewhere (an error the allies encouraged), which also delayed the response. When I google your story I did find something to that effect, so if it's an error it's not yours and you do seem to be remembering it correctly.

IIRC, the Germans also had a command-and-control issue on D-Day. Specifically once they learned where the Allies were attacking, and that it wasn't where they expected, they actually needed to wait for Hitler's approval to re-deploy significant assets. And he was sleeping. And you weren't allowed to wake him up.

Just IIRC. If it's an urban legend, I'll retract.

In the World At War BBC series I recall someone saying they thought it was a diversionary attack designed to get the Germans to pull forces from elsewhere (an error the allies encouraged), which also delayed the response. When I google your story I did find something to that effect, so if it's an error it's not yours and you do seem to be remembering it correctly.

A V-22 Osprey went down off the coast of Australia today, apparently operating from an aircraft carrier. 3 of the 26 Marines that were onboard are still missing. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... lian-coastIt's my understanding that V-22s aren't very good at exactly that thing (landing on a carrier), compared to choppers. Does anyone have some overall numbers for the safety and efficacy of the Osprey versus the aircraft it was intended to replace?

Globalsecurity.org claims the MV-22 has the lowest accident rate out of any military rotorcraft, but I'm not sure how up to date their records are. Near as I can tell, all military helicopters are deathtraps.

Globalsecurity.org claims the MV-22 has the lowest accident rate out of any military rotorcraft, but I'm not sure how up to date their records are. Near as I can tell, all military helicopters are deathtraps.

I've read that the low Osprey accident rate is because of the limitations placed on their operation specifically for this purpose.

Probably not much, an emergency UN meeting, Russia and China making some noises about "lets communicate a lot and make sure nothing bad happens." Japan is going to invest even more in its "defense" force. Maybe it will pick up some of those new "anti-ship" Tomahawks to go with its land-based AEGIS defense systems.

Oh, and South Korea will drop some huge bombs on a test range, and the US will fly a bunch of heavy bombers all around the area for a bit.

"The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea."

Even something like closing ports to shipping that contains Chinese or Russian product for a week would be profoundly disruptive. It would send a huge signal, but it would ultimately be something that has limited impact overall in the long run. We're starting to run out of levers to pull.

The same as before. I don't think anyone is going to actually make any moves until he hits someone with one of those missiles, but once he does, there will probably be a coordinated military strike from all sides. NK can do literally whatever it wants as long as it's not a real threat, but once it becomes one, it's all over. Their insistence on developing long-range ICBMs just makes it worse, because there are circumstances where the US might try to smooth things out rather than attack if it's just short range stuff, but if they can nuke the US, public support is going to be strongly in the camp of "get rid of the threat".